


in it for the long run

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: you're the one that's making me strong [27]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adashi Gift Exchange 2019, Family Feels, Gen, Keith is loved, M/M, Soft Adam (Voltron), Soft Shiro (Voltron), let's go!!!, look i'm writing for me at this point and y'all are more than welcome to join in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22246090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: “This,” Adam said one rainy October evening, “is really the last straw.”
Relationships: Adam & Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Adam/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: you're the one that's making me strong [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1261916
Comments: 18
Kudos: 46





	in it for the long run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Glacecakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glacecakes/gifts).

“This,” Adam said one rainy October evening, “is really the last straw.”

Keith and Shiro looked up from the flight exercises they were going over and turned around to stare at Adam, who was standing in front of the refrigerator with his arms folded across his chest. He seemed to be gazing into the depths of a milk jug as if it held the secrets of the universe―but the hollow-sounding _ clunk _that followed when he put it down proved that the jug merely happened to be empty. 

“What is?” asked Keith, grateful for the distraction. “Is it the milk?”

“The milk is gone,” Adam announced tragically, steepling his fingers under his chin and dropping into a chair. “I drank the last of it with that gingerbread you brought home from Sam’s class.”

“Is there something...wrong with that?” wondered Shiro. “Should I go get more?”

“I was going to make tomato soup with it,” his boyfriend mourned, gazing at the loaf of crusty bread on the countertop with something close to heartbreak. “And I drank it all, like the fool that I am, and now we’re going to have to eat something else for dinner.”

“What about sandwiches?”

“There’s nothing to put in them, unless you want tomatoes. We don’t even have any cheese.”

“We can’t have just bread and tomatoes, sunshine,” said Shiro reasonably. “We can get takeout, or I could go get groceries.”

“Actually, I think we should all go. I need to go to the Asian market anyway, and that’s too long a drive to leave you two to your own devices.”

“Why?”

“Two words, _ baba. _Blowtorch incident.”

“Oh, right. But I didn’t even burn the kitchen _ that _much, and I did get rid of the cockroach.”

“Forgive me for not wanting to take the chance again,” Adam scolded. “Can you finish your homework in time if you come with us? I’ll go alone if you can’t.”

“No, there’s only half a page left anyway,” said Keith, shooting out of his chair and out into the living room before either of his guardians had time to say another word. “Hurry up, guys. Let’s go before the rain gets bad.”

Shiro and Adam―who, at nineteen and eighteen respectively, had almost forgotten what life in their little three-room apartment was like before Keith came along―hurried up accordingly, bundling themselves up in a pair of old raincoats before hunting down a slightly smaller one in their closet for Keith. After they were ready to (in Adam’s words) brave the great outdoors, they piled into Shiro’s jeep and set off towards the other side of town, where the city’s main shopping centers were clustered together like a chain of sparkling islands in the desert. 

Adam’s target was the three-story Asian market at the very center of the commons, where he and Shiro regularly went to replenish their supplies of spices, legumes, miso paste, and tofu. After the three of them were inside and out of the rain, Shiro went off alone to fill a basket with jelly candy and instant noodles, with a can or two of tea and instant coffee for good measure. 

“Moderation, sweetheart,” laughed Adam, face lighting up like the sun when they crossed paths in the produce section. “You aren’t going to eat three jars of plum candy by yourself, are you?”

“Matt and Mishaal wanted some, so two are for them,” Shiro explained, hauling a somewhat dusty Keith out of a bin of sweet potatoes. “Oh good, you found the yams. How many pounds did you say we needed, love?”

“Two pounds of sweet potatoes, and five pounds of normal ones. And I got the _ awase _miso paste instead of white, if you’re okay with that.”

“We have a tub of white left over, so it’s fine. What else do we have to get?”

“Kimchi, dried kelp, soft tofu, and a couple of daikon radishes,” said Adam, reading off his shopping list. “I’ll find those, so while I’m doing that could you go get a few snappers and a pound of pork belly? I’m going to be using some of it for dinner tonight.”

Shiro nodded and took himself off to the meat section, while Adam and Keith finished gathering up an assortment of vegetables and then went two aisles down to find a good jar of kimchi. 

“What do we need kimchi for?” wondered Keith, putting an immense plastic bottle of it into Adam’s cart. “I don’t think you’ve ever cooked with it in all the time I’ve lived with you guys.”

“Well, you’ve only been here for three months,” Adam told him, arming himself with an enormous package of kelp. “We’ve been eating curry and roti for the past five days, so I thought it might be nice to have a change for once.”

“I _ suppose _ so,” Keith said skeptically; he was very fond of the fish curry Adam usually made on weekends, and privately doubted the older boy’s ability to make anything involving either kelp or soft tofu. “Do you know how to use any of this stuff?”

“There’s enough for a second try if I get it wrong the first time, _ beta. _”

“I guess.” Keith fidgeted with his coat and pointed at a nearby freezer, smuggling a bag of gummy worms into the cart when Adam turned around to look. “Hey, can we have some snow peas? Shiro said they’re good sauteed with rice.”

“I don’t see why not. And put the gummy worms away, Takashi’s got enough candy already.”

“But I like gummy worms.”

“Your doctor said you need extra protein and vitamins, not extra sugar,” lectured Adam. Both he and Takashi had been horrified to learn that Keith’s vitamin and mineral levels were dangerously low when he got his Garrison physical earlier that year, and since then Adam had incorporated a daily supplement regimen into the twelve-year-old’s diet and prepared every one of Keith’s meals from scratch so he could be sure of what he was actually eating. But Takashi was still convinced that the caretakers at the Baptists’ home had half starved him―the household grocery bill had nearly tripled after Keith arrived, and the distraught older brother believed it was because he was trying to make up for years of poor nutrition by eating everything in sight. 

“They _ didn’t _starve me at the home, you know,” Keith grumbled, snatching the gummy worms back. “I know I was always hungry, but they gave me so much food that they told me I’d be sick if I had more. Everyone thought I was weird for eating so much, so I’m pretty sure I was the only kid with an appetite that huge.”

Adam frowned and thought back to the time he tried to pick Keith up when he fell asleep on the sofa one night. Keith stood less than five feet tall and was still as thin as a rake even after months of eating Adam’s home-cooked meals, but when Adam tried to lift him he nearly wrenched his back because of how _ heavy _he was. 

“Well, I don’t doubt that,” he muttered, eyeing Keith’s skinny shoulders in bemusement. “I don’t know where you put everything I feed you, but you’re definitely putting it somewhere. Between you and a tank, I’d pretty sure the tank would lose.”

“Is that a...good thing?”

“It’s not a bad thing,” Adam told him. “Just a confusing one, but then you’re a confusing kid. I don’t know what I’d have done without your sense of smell when the downstairs neighbors had a fire.”

“I _ still _can’t believe you didn’t smell it,” said Keith severely. “We’d all have died if I wasn’t down with a cold that day. You should get your nose checked.”

_ That fireman did say only a dog could have smelled it from the second floor, though, _ Adam reminded himself. _ I’m _ still _ confused about that. And he had a cold, too. _

“Adam! I just texted Shiro, and he says I can have the gummy worms.”

“No, you may not.”

“But―”

“_ Next time. _Now come on, or none of us are going to get to eat before midnight.”

* * *

They got home roughly an hour later, staggering up the stairs to apartment 254 with six grocery bags apiece and sweaters drenched through with the rain. Takashi had insisted on carrying everything Adam and Keith couldn’t, and flopped onto the sofa with a can of tea stuffed down his shirt the second he managed to get over the threshold.

“Ow,” he moaned, gently dropping a radish into Keith’s open palms. “I’m never doing that again, sunshine. My back feels like I’m ninety.”

“We could have done a second round, you know,” chided Adam, leaning down to kiss his forehead before bustling off to the kitchen. “But you didn’t want to, so here we are. Come help me cut the vegetables after you’ve caught your breath, okay?”

Shiro nodded. “In a minute, love. And Keith, go take a shower before dinner, or you’ll catch a cold.”

“But I’m clean,” Keith protested. “The rain soaked me all the way down to my skin.”

“That isn’t a shower, kiddo. You need soap.”

Keith sighed and tramped off towards the bathroom, leaving a trail of wet socks and gloves behind him before shutting himself inside it. Shiro sat on the couch for a while and then went to help Adam in the kitchen, busying himself with chopping green onions and kimchi while Adam put a pot of stock on the stove to boil. 

“What are you making?” Shiro asked, watching his boyfriend pour sesame oil into a shallow dish of pepper flakes. “You haven’t used the pepper flakes since you made that fried chicken last year for our graduation dinner.”

“I thought it might be nice to make a surprise for Keith,” smiled Adam. “I’m making soft tofu stew. He mentioned once that his dad used to cook it during fall, and after all that trouble with the Griffin kid…”

“Oh God, James. At least Iverson got him to apologize after Keith finished his sim suspension.”

“James was out of line,” Adam agreed, hacking the piece of pork belly in two and giving one half to Shiro. “And I’m glad someone could make him say he was sorry, even if it wasn’t either of us―but Keith _ is _getting a little vain about his flying, and I’m not going to hear another word about him having every right to be. A little humility goes a long way, and Keith isn’t too young to learn that.”

Shiro threw back his head and laughed. “I’m not going to disagree with that, _ koiishi. _He’s learned his lesson now, and I even saw him offering to help Hernandez with his homework a few days ago.”

“You mean Taylor Hernandez? Did he say yes?”

“Actually, he told Keith he could share his sim practice time if he wanted.”

_ “Really?” _

“I know it sounds mad, but he did. Those two might even end up being friends, if we give them enough time.”

“Taylor’s got the biggest crush on Keith,” Adam whispered, after checking that the shower was still on in the bathroom. “But don’t tell him I said that. That rivalry nonsense he keeps talking about is just to get Keith’s attention, and Keith hasn’t figured it out.”

“He will eventually,” Shiro whispered back. “After all, we did, and we weren’t much older then.”

“And it only took a prom, Iverson giving us three months of detention, Mishaal robbing the events coordinator blind, and then you thinking I was madly in love with _ Matt_, for some reason.”

“You were going to ask him to the cotillion! What else was I supposed to think?”

“I loved you from the moment you knocked me over in the hallway and sent my books flying all over the place,” Adam told him. “I still can’t believe you didn’t notice.”

“You didn’t notice how gone I was for you either, honey.”

“No, I did,” his boyfriend sighed. “I was just too afraid to believe it was true, and I didn’t want to lose you as a friend if I was wrong. Sometimes I think we could have had almost an extra year together, if only I’d been brave enough to tell you sooner.”

“Well, you’ve got me now,” murmured Shiro, wrapping his arms around Adam’s chest and kissing the small of his back. “And you’ll have me for as long as I live, so I wouldn’t worry about that.”

* * *

Three-quarters of an hour later, Keith finally came out of his room and followed his nose to the kitchen, where Adam was putting the finishing touches on his pot of tofu stew. Shiro was setting the table, as he always did before meals, and when Keith marched in he found them flirting shamelessly―as they always did no matter the time of day, and without sparing Keith’s feelings on the subject whatsoever.

“Can’t you flirt when I’m _ not _here?” he complained, watching Shiro fill up a bowl of rice and boiled snow peas. “You guys have a whole room to yourselves. Why do I need to watch you making kissy faces at each other?”

“Wait until you find someone to make kissy faces at,” sang Adam, tearing his eyes away from Shiro with some difficulty and measuring out three servings of stew. “And don’t say you won’t, because it’s a wonderful thing. Get the eggs for me, will you, _ janu _?” This last was directed at Shiro, who kissed the tip of his nose in passing and brought him the carton of eggs. “I need to put them in while the stew’s hot.”

With that he put a laden bowl in front of Keith, who picked up his spoon and then went very still as he realized what was inside it. 

“Is that...soft tofu stew?” he asked, so quietly that Adam had to lean closer to hear him. “That’s what the kimchi and the seaweed was for?”

“Does it look okay?” fretted Shiro, suddenly terrified that his part in the preparations had gone horribly wrong. “We followed a recipe from the internet, and we tried to make sure it was an authentic one but...” 

And then he fell silent, because Keith had swallowed a bite of pork and then began to cry.

“Is it bad?” Adam worried. “I can make it again if it’s not right, don’t cry―”

“It’s _ perfect, _ ” wept Keith, trying to talk through a mouthful of broth and green onions. “It tastes just like the stew my dad made when I was little. He used to make it before my first day at school, and then send me to class with the leftovers in my lunchbox. And it’s been so long that I just kind of _ forgot _about it.” 

He choked on a sob and ate a little more, and as Adam and Shiro stood there watching each spoonful travel from plate to mouth they almost felt like crying themselves. More often than not, they felt like children trying to bring up another child with everything he needed to flourish―or, on more uncertain days, like a pair of children out of their depth and doomed to fail at the most important task either of them had ever been given. But today―today, at least―they had done something right, and when Keith barreled around the table and hugged them both they knew they could be certain of it. 

“Thanks,” Keith mumbled into the front of Shiro’s shirt. “I really missed it.”

“Anytime, _ baba_,” promised Adam. _ “Anytime.” _

* * *

After dinner was over and Keith went to bed, Shiro found his boyfriend standing near the half-open door to Keith’s room, watching his small shoulders rise and fall as if he didn’t understand what exactly he was looking at.

“Adam, sweetheart?” Shiro murmured, wrapping his arms around Adam’s waist. “What are you standing here for? It’s late, come to bed.”

“I just―he’s really ours, isn’t he?”

“Come again, love?”

Adam twisted around in his embrace to look at him instead. “We―we have to make this work, _ janu_. We don’t have another choice. He belongs to us now, and we belong to _ him_.”

His eyes―eyes that first pulled Shiro into their thrall four years ago and hadn’t let go of him since―seemed different, Shiro thought. The snapping fire of their younger days had disappeared completely, and a strange, boundless tenderness had taken its place instead―as if the laughing farm boy who feared neither God nor man had fallen to something less than either, and would now put nothing above its welfare for all the rest of his life. 

“I know,” he said simply, tightening his embrace. “I’m with you, darling. For as long as he needs us, and after.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to afford everything he’ll need,” worried Adam, pressing his cheek to the side of Shiro’s neck. “God knows we don’t make much, and our emergency funds are gone. Do you think we could pick up some more work on campus or something?”

Shiro shook his head. “Not you, definitely. You still have school to pay for, and exploration missions pay better than teaching. If I can get the Kuiper one year after next, we won’t have to worry about money for a while.”

“But that’s six months, moonlight. You can’t leave for that long, anything could go wrong―”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong, I’ll be sitting around for most of the time,” he soothed. “And―well, until then, I guess I could write to my dad’s family for my share of his inheritance.”

Adam blinked. “Come again?”

“A share of my grandfather’s estate was signed over to my dad while he was still alive, according to my jii-chan. So when my dad died, it passed to me, after. They’re still holding it in trust, because I haven’t asked, but―it’s somewhere in the range of nine and a half million by now, I think. We wouldn’t have to worry for a good long while, and it’s more than enough for your degree and any schooling Keith wants after he gets his certification. Plus a house, too, if you want it.”

“That’s a lot to think about,” said Adam, dazed. “But you haven’t talked to them in years, _ makhnaa. _We’re managing fine as we are, and if anything happens I can always ask my aunt to start sending me my part of the farm profits. She wouldn’t mind―I spent ten years working on the place, and it’s mine by rights.”

“I know, but no one can actually use my dad’s inheritance but me,” Shiro reminded him. “And it’ll be money well spent if it’s on you and Keith. You know I want to marry you, sooner rather than later, and share a life with you―I guess we got started early on the kids part, but I know you want to adopt a few babies someday, and I want that with you, too.”

“Not yet, Takashi,” Adam chuckled. “Wait until your career settles down, and you won’t have to leave for a third of every year, and then you can ask me to marry you.”

“Why not now?”

“Mm...because there’s a whole universe out there besides me, I guess,” he mused. “And I just have this feeling that you’re going to do amazing things out there.”

“Will you come with me?” whispered Shiro. “Please, _ koiishi. _I’ve―”

“No,” Adam said gently. “I’m not all that fussed about being a pilot, ‘Kashi. And I’m not leaving the ground until Keith can take care of himself. We decided on that, remember?”

“I guess.” He paused. “Doesn’t really stop me from wishing, though.”

“Space isn’t for me, honey. I was born in a farmhouse, and I grew up around floods and rainstorms and planting seasons and marketplaces―.something in me would die, if I ever went to space for more than maybe a week.”

“Do you ever think you might want to go back?”

“Someday,” Adam confessed. “But it won’t be until you’re ready to go with me.”

“I will be someday,” smiled Shiro, leaning down to kiss him. “And then you can see me in work clothes and a straw hat, and lose your mind like you did the time I came off the Mars mission six feet tall and built.”

“We promised never to mention that again,” scolded Adam, cheeks blushing redder than strawberries. “And we’ll wake Keith up if we keep standing here. Come on, let’s go to bed.” And with that he wrapped his arm around Shiro’s and pulled him into the next room, shutting the paneled door in their wake and leaving a peaceful silence behind them--until someone broke it close to midnight, so softly and contentedly that it sounded more like a sigh. 

_ “He belongs to us now, _ ” the someone said, long after Adam and Shiro had finally fallen asleep. _ “And we belong to him.” _

Because Keith―bat-eared and nosy as he was―had been wide awake the whole time. 

  
  



End file.
